WOMEN IN ISLAM

Everyone, the world over, condemned the Taliban’s
abominable treatment of women in Afghanistan, but oppression of Muslim
women happens everywhere. It’s usually more subtle—sometimes
so subtle that even the women don’t know they’re being oppressed—
but it’s just as oppres-sive. Thank God we were blessed to receive
the purified message, and we have an easy-to-read-and-understand English
translation of the Quran. So, we know that God says that men and women
are equal and “oppression is worse than murder.”

Since we know the truth and since it’s so distorted in most of
the world, how do we get the message across? In this time when more and
more people are expressing interest in Islam and the Quran, how do we
reach people, espe-cially women, with the truth?

It’s so important for people to realize
that Islam as it’s traditionally practiced has virtually nothing
to do with Islam as it was revealed. And it’s more than just terrorism
that’s false; it’s more than the fundamentalists who have
it wrong. Unfortunately the majority of average people in the world, who
claim to be Muslims, have serious misconceptions about the True Islam.
Because of the distorted view of Islam by so-called religious scholars
who make references to man-made sources, the Muslims en masse are essentially
unaware or ignorant of the beautiful message in their Holy Book, the
Quran.

Into this time of heightened awareness, Lisa Spray has written a delightful
book addressing the discrepancies between women’s rights as set
forth in the Quran and as practiced by Muslims today.

She calls it Heart’s Surprise:
A Personal Reconciliation of Women’s Rights and the Quran and Islam.
Everyone who reads the Perspective or accesses the Submission web site
knows someone who should read and learn from this book. It’s light
and clear and very perceptive.

I have found that often when the practice of some Muslims does not
mesh with my understanding of the Quran, the issue is one of culture….
It is very human to accept that people eat food very different from what
we enjoy, listen to music that puts our nerves on edge, and then still
expect them to have the same spiritual reality we do. This is very human,
but very unrealistic. In many ways our spiritual reality is at the core
of our culture, and thus at the core of our-selves. How can we expect
it to be the same for every one?...